


Idle Hands

by MaximumCat



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Crack, Explicit Language, Fluff and Crack, Gen, Humor, Mention of Animal Death, Not Canon Compliant, Semi-Crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 09:44:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21034238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaximumCat/pseuds/MaximumCat
Summary: “Now, I know you’re nervous, but this is just a baseline test. I just need to know where you’re starting from. We can work on everything else,” Reyes reassured her.O’Deorain nodded, but kept her eyes trained on the pistol.This oughta be good, thought Jesse, as Dr. O’Deorain slowly picked up the pistol.-------------------------------------------------------------Dr. Moira O'Deorain is a new hire to Blackwatch. Commander Gabriel Reyes is tired soul that needs to run her through some baseline tests to know what areas she needs improvement in. Jesse McCree is a cowboy with a paranoid stomach and a mouth that doesn't always know when to shut up.All three are about to be reminded that standard procedure is very rarely standard in Blackwatch.----No romanceMostly humor and crack/semi-crackRated Teen for Foul language and brief mention of lab animal death





	Idle Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [totally-not-an-awkward-okapi](https://totally-not-an-awkward-okapi.tumblr.com) on Tumblr for Beta-ing this. 
> 
> And dealing with my stupidity. 
> 
> I'm sorry I'm so strange. 
> 
> And panicky. 
> 
> At any rate, this story is very VERY loosely based on a story my Dad told me while he was an Army Doctor in the US Military stationed in Germany. He was a good marksman, but some of his co-workers... not so much...
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy! 
> 
> (Also - constructive criticism is always appreciated <3 )

Standard procedure was supposed to make things easier, streamlined, even. So why standard procedure never failed to be anything but easy, Gabriel Reyes wasn’t sure. The mission to root out the Deadlock gang was standard procedure, and yet he ended up with a very un-standard cowboy. The intelligence mission in Hanamura had started off as standard procedure, but that had gone off the rails so quickly and thoroughly that he ended up with a train wreck of cyborg ninja and a massive headache. Granted, he didn’t know much about ninjas, but he was pretty sure that most of Genji was not standard, physically or mentally, nor had ever been. 

So by the time that he was bringing in one Dr. Moira O’Deorain, he didn’t have much hope for standard procedure. Already, he had broken a lot of standard procedures by recruiting her in secret. But now that she had (probably foolishly on her part) said yes, maybe he could get back to standard procedure? 

It was with that thread of hope that he sat down at his desk with his new doctor on the other side. Her odd colored eyes watched him carefully and she was a bit too tall for the chair, but she was sitting quietly, patiently waiting for him to speak. 

Good. So far so good. McCree had been cursing up a storm by this point and Genji had had this talk in a hospital bed, so maybe this would go well for a change. 

He took a sip of his coffee (as black as the mug was contained in – if you didn’t count the white text “as black as my soul” emblazoned on the side). He cleared his throat and then began. 

“In order to get you fully situated in the team there are some standard procedures we need to go through to assess your skills, strengths and weaknesses.” 

The doctor nodded slowly. “Alright, I’m assuming that you mean my skills outside of my field of expertise?” 

Whew. Thank god she was sharp; this would go quickly. “Yes, I have no doubts in your abilities in the field of genetics, but you will likely be tapped to do other things depending on what resources we have available. We need to make sure that we have a good idea of where you are before I can do that. And don’t worry, we can train you on anything that you don’t know.” 

“I’m sure you can. What will I be tested on?” 

“Mostly physical tests, like endurance, but I do have you down to test your abilities as a field medic. I saw in your file that you were in a medic squad during the Omnic Crisis. Is that correct?” 

“Yes, that is correct.” 

“Ok great. It’ll just be a test to see what you remember. I will likely need you as a medic while you’re on base as well, when we’re short-handed. Will you be able to handle that?”

The red head could not seem to contain her grimace, but her answer was delivered in a neutral tone. “I’d… rather not, I’m not good with people, but… I will fill in as needed.”

“Ok, fair enough. I will try to shield you, but there will be times it’s unavoidable.” He scribbled down a note - aware that she is not good with people/ maybe do workshops to improve personal relations? – when a thought struck him. 

“How is your aim?” 

“My… aim?” Dr. O’Deorain shifted in her chair. 

“Yeah, your aim. What was your score on the range?” 

“The… range?” Her voice was wavering ever-so-slightly. 

Gabriel felt his frustration rise. What was she? A parrot? He set down his pen sharply. “The shooting range, Dr. O’Deorain. You will need to be able to protect yourself and others when we are out in the field. And I know that you would have been handed a gun as a field medic in The Crisis and when you worked for Overwatch upstairs they would have had you do shooting exercises at least once a year for in order for you to keep your research position.  _ What is your score, Doctor? _ ”

Dr. O’Deorain was rigid in her chair and stared almost unblinking over his right shoulder. Was she nervous? “I… I didn’t do the tests when I was… when I was with Over- when I was upstairs. Well, I did it once. And then - then, they told me not to bother doing it again.” 

That… was NOT standard procedure upstairs. He knew that for a fact. And while he didn’t think she was lying, she was definitely hiding something. But what? And why?

The obvious answer was that her aim was bad. Well, Gabriel had seen some bad shots in his time in and around military groups, and every one of them had shown marked improvement when they were shown some extra time and attention to their gun training. So, time to reassure her; he didn’t need her to be spooked off so early. 

“Listen, I get it. You aren’t a good shot. That’s fine. We will give you some extra training and go slow. You may never be a fucking sniper, but we’re not asking you to become one either. All you will need to be able to do is defend yourself and your teammates.” 

The doctor relaxed a tad but still looked and sounded apprehensive. “Alright…”

Gabriel sighed and set the paperwork to the side. “Look, I’ll meet you at the Blackwatch range 5-B tomorrow at 09:00 AM. Sharp. We’ll get the baseline of your shooting proficiency out of the way first so we can move on to other things.”

Dr. O’Deorain nodded slowly, clearly unhappy, but unwilling to contradict him so early in her employment. 

“Great,” He picked up his tablet, and turned his chair so he faced to the side away from her. “See you then, Doctor. Dismissed,” He waved at hand at her to punctuate that the conversation was over.

He focused on his tablet, but kept an ear out for Dr. O’Deorain’s slow departure from his office. Once he heard the door click shut behind her, he rubbed his temples and set down his tablet. 

Ugh, he was getting a splitting headache again. Hopefully he could get her up to speed soon so she could start work on more… urgent problems.

* * *

Jesse’s gut feeling was rarely wrong (except for when it came to certain foods – why his stomach hated the Strike Commander’s cooking was anyone’s guess, but it never failed to force him into camping in the bathroom for a day afterwards, no matter how good/inoffensively bland it tasted).

Right now his gut was unhappy with the boss’s new… “doctor”, Moira O’Deorain. 

Ok, maybe putting doctor in quotations was a bit much (as far as he knew, this spindly, beanpole of a woman DID actually have a doctorate in… something? Something medical-based, he was sure, but he had been spacing out when the boss had gone over her credentials.)

Reyes had been cagey about why he wanted this giraffe-human hybrid to be in Blackwatch, which was setting off all sorts of warning bells in Jesse’s head and guts.

“We NEED her, Jesse.”

“For what, exactly?”

“To patch up your sorry ass during a mission, ingrate. Or do you not remember Cairo?”

“I was fine! It was just a graze!”

“A graze that required 35 stitches and a blood bag when we got back to base?”

“Yeah, exactly. A graze.”

Reyes’s eyebrows arched at him. 

“Oh come on, boss, we got pet medics back at every base. Why do we need one in the field?”

“We need one in case shit goes south and we need medical help ASAP. And with how missions have been going lately, I think it’s going to start happening sooner rather than later.”

Jesse frowned. Agents got injured or even killed on missions before this witch showed up, why was this important now?

Reyes saw his frown and sighed. “Look kid, with any luck she won’t be out on the field much.”

A thought struck Jesse, “Has she  _ ever  _ been out in the field?”

“Yeah, actually, she was part of a field medic group in The Crisis.”

Jesse tried to imagine this almost stick figure woman helping out in The Crisis. He got stuck on the image of her bright hair peeking out from behind a piece of crumbled wall and blurted out, “How the hell did she not get fucking sniped with that carrot head sticking out of cover ‘cuz she’s too tall to hide properly?”

Reyes sneered at him with a warning growl, “Jesse…”

Jesse held up his hands in a placating gesture, “I’m sorry, boss! I’m just having trouble imagining it!”

Reyes’ shoulders sagged in defeat, “Just fucking help me get her through her base line test in the range today - with minimal commentary - and I won’t have you taste test anything Jack cooks for the rest of the week.”

Jesse perked up. That was a pretty sweet exchange. “Ok, you got yourself a deal.”

Reyes nodded and poked at the tablet he was holding to make the clock appear. “Ok, so it’s 08:45 now, so she should be here soon. Before she arrives, I wanted to tell you, I have reason to believe that she’s a pretty bad shot, so just know that if you make one fucking comment about it, the whole deal is off.”

Jesse chewed on his cigarillo contemplatively and narrowed his eyes. “A bad shot, huh?”

Reyes rolled his eyes and pointedly said, “Not everyone is blessed with Deadeye or the opportunity to get trained by a world class sniper who moonlights as a mom. She can be trained, just like everyone else here. Besides, she just needs to be able to defend herself and you idiots in case of emergency. Her main focus will be keeping your sorry asses alive.”

Jesse pouted. That... was fair enough. “Fine, but I reserve the right to laugh once I get out of earshot.”

Reyes snorted, “Ha, that’s fine. Kid, I’d be worried about you if you didn’t.”

“Not a kid,” Jesse grumbled under his breath.

Reyes just smirked and gave him a playful shove, “You’ll see that when you get to be my age, everyone’s a kid. Now go get everything set up. Call me on comm if you need me.”

Jesse grumbled some more and pulled his signature cowboy hat down over his face. He didn’t feel like arguing that point with Reyes, so he turned and went to go set up the simulation. 

He went over to the console and punched in the order for a level 1 shooting simulation. He watched as the machines whirred to life and brought a paper bullseye target up one of the lanes about 100 feet away from the little moveable podium that served as the base position for this test. 

Reyes had set up the podium himself and had set down a very familiar looking pistol. 

“Why’re you giving her one of Angie’s little pea shooters to test with?” McCree queried through the comm. 

Reyes’ voice came through loud and clear in his ear, “Because, hopefully, we can just stick Dr. O’Deorain in Angie’s prototype Valkyrie suit and be done with it. You and Genji have already been working on how to fight alongside that tech; no need to reinvent the wheel. Plus, it’ll be another person testing the suit and giving feedback. Win-Win.”

Jesse again tried to imagine the new doc, only this time with wings and a staff. With her height, those wings would have to be massive, and she would probably be as tall or taller than the staff. He snorted to himself in amusement. 

Jesse checked the time on the console. 08:58. Dr. Strange-looks should be here soon. He tapped an irregular beat on the console, but then realized that there was another sound in the area. 

He looked up to the roof of the shooting range, which was a thin sheet of metal. He could hear the sound of a sudden downpour hitting the roof. 

In other Blackwatch ranges, you wouldn’t be able to hear the rain, because the roof would be different materials (concrete and steel), but this one was old, on the edge of the compound, and meant for practice with explosives, so they had gone with a cheap sheet metal roof.

Huh, he didn’t think it would be raining today. Judging by the slightly confused look Reyes was giving the ceiling, it looked like the boss wasn’t expecting it either. 

That was… sort of ominous. It just needed to fucking start thunder and lightning all over the place and he would be convinced that this lady was a stretched out demon in an ill-fitting human suit. 

And speak of the devil…  _ she  _ came through the door, closing it behind her with a click. She wore a thin, black long-sleeve shirt with Blackwatch’s symbol over her heart along with grey leggings.

The woman in question looked only a few missed meals away from skeletal. Jesse wondered if the boss was planning on fattening her up. Right now it looked like a stiff wind could take her out of commission, much less any sort of fieldwork. 

“Ah, Doctor, I see you made it on time. Good, good. Come over here and we can get this test over with and we can move on to other things.” Gabriel called out to Dr. O’Deorain as she looked around the room. 

She looks…uncomfortable, thought Jesse, as he noticed that the doctor kept tugging at her long sleeves. 

Dr. O’Deorain quickly joined Reyes at the podium, her eyes locked onto the small pistol laying on top of it the entire time she strode over.

“Now, I know you’re nervous, but this is just a baseline test. I just need to know where you’re starting from. We can work on everything else,” Reyes reassured her. 

O’Deorain nodded, but kept her eyes trained on the pistol. 

“Great, let’s get started,” Reyes said as he tapped on his tablet to begin taking notes. “This is a light pistol, not only in terms of weight and size, but in that it shoots projectiles of hard light. We won’t be needing eye or ear protection with it, so don’t worry about that. Take a moment to inspect the weapon you’ll be using today.”

This oughta be good, thought Jesse, as Dr. O’Deorain slowly picked up the pistol. 

Jesse knew that boss was taking notes, but he figured he’d pay close attention too, in the very likely event that he has to give his impressions of the doctor’s performance. 

So far, she had shown decent weapon handling skills, if very slow and painstakingly drawn out, as if she could delay the inevitable by pretending to be a sloth. While she didn’t look over the gun as much as Jesse would have liked, she did have good trigger discipline, and kept the gun pointed at the floor, away from herself and Reyes. 

Jesse frowned when he saw that she had it in her right hand, the weird creepy one. He hadn’t really interacted with her much, but he got the distinct feeling that while that hand had a complete range of motion, the fingers tended to not bend as naturally and fluidly as the ones on her left. 

Come to think of it, was she right or left handed? He was pretty sure he had seen her handle objects with both hands. Maybe she was ambidextrous? Or…maybe she had trained herself to be able to use her left hand after what happened to the right one? He made a mental note to ask Reyes about it later. 

“Good, I see you’ve already learned parts of gun safety. Now, take your time, but I want you to take off the safety, then fire one round at the paper target down the lane,” Reyes continued, nodding his head to indicate where the target was. 

O’Deorain took a visibly deep breath, raised the gun towards the target, and thumbed off the safety. 

Her stance is horrible, thought Jesse mildly. We’ll have to work on that. Guess they don’t teach giraffes how to stand when they fire a gun in fancy-pants laboratories. 

There was another long silent moment as O’Deorain presumably lined up her shot. She slowly put her long index finger on the trigger, and pulled. 

** _PEW_ **

The trouble with light guns, Jesse mused as he watched O’Deorain stumble a step back due to sheer surprise at the noise, is that they lacked the nice hefty boom of a traditional firearm. 

Welp, time to see if she even hit the damn target. He looked over that the paper bullseye. 

Nothing. 

It was completely intact. 

Jesse was not surprised in the slightest. 

He looked over at Reyes and O’Deorain. Reyes also didn’t look surprised but appeared to be looking at the back wall to see where her shot did land. O’Deorain’s expression, however, caught Jesse off guard. 

She was as stiff as a board, her eyes wide. Her left hand was creeping up to cover her mouth, while the right rigidly clutched the gun now pointed at the floor. 

All of that would be text-book mortification at people watching you be a bad shot, except that her gaze wasn’t at the paper target, it was directed towards the ceiling off to the left of the arm holding the paper target.

Scrunching his eyebrows, he followed her gaze. His jaw dropped at what he saw, and he had to fumble to catch his cigarillo from hitting the ground.

There was a hole in the ceiling. 

And the rain was coming through.

There was a puddle forming on the ground directly underneath.

From the hole.

That O’Deorain had shot into the ceiling. 

Hoooooooly Fuck. 

Bad shot did not even begin to cover it. 

Reyes was going to have his work cut out for him. 

Jesse stole a glance back at Reyes and the doctor. Reyes has finally caught up to the situation and was also staring at the ceiling, his mouth in a grim line. 

“Well,” began Reyes, “that explains a few things…”

* * *

The rest of the test didn’t go much better. Of three full clips of the light projectile pistol, Dr. O’Deorain hit the paper target 5 times. One was a bullseye, but it was pretty clear that it was a complete stroke of luck. And that was for a stationary target. For the moving targets, she hit one target. And it was a nick to the paper, not even a hit into one of the rings of the target. 

Jesse was pretty sure that the safest place to be was behind the target. He was hoping that Reyes would come to his senses and drop this whole idea of bringing this quack of a doctor onboard, before she shot someone in the back on accident. Or on purpose, chimed a paranoid voice in his mind.

Even Dr. O’Deorain looked like she wanted to run far away and hide under a rock. She had been blushing more and more in what was presumably embarrassment as the test had dragged on. However, now she looked like she was switching wildly between blushing out of embarrassment and out of fury of having to continue. Her red face was clashing with her red hair in a very unflattering way. Not that any part of her looking flattering, really.

Sadly, Reyes seemed determined to make everyone’s life hell. “Well, we’re done with this part of your testing. Go take a break and then we’ll get started on the endurance and agility portions of your intake.” 

Jesse noticed the incredulous look on the doctor’s face and was pretty sure he was wearing a matching expression. 

Reyes gave her a sharp look, and waved at hand at her, “Go on, I’ll come get you in a bit.”

O’Deorain raised an eyebrow but flicked the safety back on and set the pistol down on the podium. She walked out of the room stiffly and shut the door behind her with more force than necessary. 

Jesse quickly shut down the program running the range and moseyed out to stand near Reyes, who was angrily poking at his tablet. 

After a few moments of silence, Reyes spoke. “Go on, kid,”

Jesse blinked, “Go on and what?”

“Go on and laugh,” Reyes growled with an annoyed tone, “you must be dying to.”

Jesse swallowed, “Actually boss, after seeing…  _ that?  _ I’m not really feeling it.”

Reyes sighed and slumped his shoulders. “I can put her in some intensive training, but from what I’ve seen of her, I’m not sure it’s gonna be all that helpful.”

“Or… you could just get rid of her and not have to deal with any of this?”

Reyes’ head snapped up and glared at him, “That’s not happening, Jesse. I know you get the creeps from her but she’s staying. We need her. End of discussion.”

Jesse thought idly, I wish you’d tell me why we need her, but said out loud, “Ok, boss, ok.”

Reyes sighed again, “That being said, you got any ideas on helping her get better?”

Jesse chewed on his cigarillo for a moment. 

“Honestly, boss? If she wanted to improve that would be one thing, but she doesn’t strike me as the type. And frankly, yeah, it’s obvious that she’s had the training at some point, but from how she holds it and looks at it, she doesn’t want to be near a gun at all. Maybe something happened when she was a medic in the Crisis, I dunno. But I figure that unless she wants to improve, she ain’t gonna, no matter how hard you try.” 

Reyes hummed thoughtfully, so Jesse took that as a sign to continue, “Maybe we find out if she’s good at something else? Miss Amari chucks healing grenades pretty well, maybe those noodles fer arms the Docs got are good for throwin’ shit.”

Reyes sighed again. “That’s… actually a good idea. I’ll talk to Ana and get some more ideas.”

“I’m full of great ideas!”

Reyes smirked, “Oh, you got any ideas for what to do about the hole in the roof?” He pointed at the ever growing puddle/lake on the range floor. 

Jesse shrugged, “Get Reinhardt to practice doing fire strikes in here, then tell Torb to come fix it once the roof is Swiss cheese?”

Reyes just laughed. 

* * *

Gabriel wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry anymore. Dr. O’Deorain’s physical and endurance test had been pretty good, but she sucked at throwing grenades like Jesse had suggested. Talking to Ana hadn’t given him anything other than a headache; she had just told him that the new recruit just needed to “git gud”. If the new recruit hadn’t been Dr. O’Deorain, he would have just begged Ana to do a few lessons on shooting, but as it was he didn’t want those two women anywhere near each other. Mostly for his own sanity. 

He sighed and knocked on the door to Dr. O’Deorain’s new lab. She was still in the process of settling in and unpacking, so he knew that she was in there. 

A muffled “Come in!” came through the door, so he put his palm on the keypad’s scanner and watched the door slide open. 

The room was filled with boxes in various states of being emptied, as well as one poor tawny rabbit in a cage, and two half wilted potted plants. The doctor in question had on what Gabriel assumed to be her preferred “work uniform” of a black shirt, colored tie and grey slacks. 

She had her back to the door and was hunched over, elbows deep in a box. She didn’t even look up as she continued rummaging in the box like it held the secrets of the universe. Maybe it did. 

He immediately internally face-palmed. Didn’t bother checking to see who was at the door, had her back to the door, and didn’t even look up. If he had been a threat, she would have been dead five times over by now. 

But that was something to work on later, right now he had matters to discuss. 

“Dr. O’Deorain? Have you got a moment?”

The doctor’s head popped out of the box and whipped around to look at him over her shoulder. 

“Oh, Commander Reyes! I’m sorry, I thought you were the delivery man with more boxes. How may I help you?”

She turned around and straightened up to her full height. It was going to take a bit to get used to having someone other than Reinhardt being significantly taller than him. 

“Look, I’m going to be very direct and blunt, right now, doctor. You can’t shoot, and after you watching you throw grenades, I am worried that you’ll give our team concussions while trying to heal them.”

The poor doctor looked nervous at the statement, but that wasn’t the point of this, so Gabriel went on, “Now, I went through some of your old papers and I saw that you had a different proposal for the nanotech that Dr. Ziegler uses.”

Now, Dr. O’Deorian looked furious and opened her mouth to say something, but Gabriel held up a finger and steam rolled past her, “Look, I know that she accuses you of stealing her research. But I also know that there’s some evidence that  _ her  _ work is based on  _ yours _ , not the other way around. I don’t care what the truth of that matter is, as long as the tech works. If you stole it, fine, I don’t really care, it’s not like Overwatch isn’t doing the exact same fucking thing.”

The doctor’s demeanor seemed to shift from fury to curiosity, prompting Gabriel to keep going. He could work with curious. “You made a proposal that you could use the same nanotech to harm as well as heal. You even said that you made a device that proved it. I want to see it and I want to see if you could defend yourself with it.”

O’Deorain stared at him for a bit before she finally spoke, “I can show it to you and I do believe that I can defend myself with it… But I don’t think you’ll like it.”

“Why’s that?”

She shrugged a shoulder, “It’s not something that other people besides myself will be willing or even able to use. It takes advantage of the… mishap with my right arm. I don’t think any of your other medics will be lining up to replicate the experience. And besides, I was under the impression that draining the life from people falls into an ethically grey area; something Overwatch tries to avoid.”

“We aren’t Overwatch, ethics can be fuzzy here. Also, I don’t care about my other medics, I care if I can find something,  _ anything _ , that you can use to protect yourself out in the field. Show it to me.”

O’Deorain nodded. She then brushed by him to pen up a large box, revealing a large, white backpack-like container with tubes and other tubes and wiring packed around it.

He watched as she put it on, with the tubes still dangling from it. She dug out two gloves connected to thinner tubes, which she then connected to the container. The left glove looked like a thick fingerless glove, though with the flat spray nozzle in the palm it more resembled a gauntlet. The other glove looked like it came straight out of a nightmare with the needle tips of syringes for claws. 

The back pack and the left glove had slipped on without much fuss. So far Gabriel wasn’t seeing the problem with this device. 

But then she put on the right glove. She had rolled up her sleeve to reveal her withered and scarred hand and forearm, so the thicker part of the gauntlet could sit on her bare skin. She adjusted the needle tips to fit properly on her fingers, and then she started fiddling with a dangly bit of two wires that came out to the back of the gauntlet on her right arm. They met up at the ends, connected by a small black connecting piece. As she straightened out the tube, he noticed that it had a set of three needles protruding from one side. She finally got the two tubes smoothed out, and then pushed the needles into the flesh of her arm just above the outside of her elbow. 

Oh, ok. NOW he saw the issue. While O’Deorain had inserted the needles without so much as a flinch, he wasn’t sure anyone else would be willing to be stuck with needles just to make a device work. 

As she fiddled with the device more, putting one last needle tipped tube connecting her back to the larger backpack, he wanted, no,  _ needed  _ to break the silence. “So, uh, what’s it do?”

“Well, I can’t do much of a proper demonstration in here, but I can give you the basics.”

“This hand,” she said holding up and wiggling the fingers of her left hand, “gives healing nano-biotics in a concentrated spray. It can work both topically, and internally by ingesting it or breathing it in. In function it works very similarly to…  _ Ziegler’s  _ work.”

Gabriel nodded. So far so good. 

“This hand,” she said, holding up and wiggling the nightmarish needle fingers of her right hand, “takes away. I get the impression you don’t want a lecture on how it works, but just rest assured, it does damage.”

Gabriel furrowed his eyebrows, “Do you need to touch things to… uh... take away?”

She shook her head, “No, there’s a short range in which it will function.”

Gabriel felt like this is a bad idea but he asked anyway, “May I see it in action?”

O’Deorain cocked her head to one side by a few degrees and looked around the room. “Hmmm… yes.”

At first he thinks she’s going to drain the poor tawny rabbit, but instead she walks over a few feet from one of the half dead potted plants and extends her right hand. A thin, dark, almost violet stream of… energy? Matter? Something? reached out from the gauntlet to the plant and latched on. 

Gabriel’s jaw dropped as he saw the plant wither and die in a matter of seconds. 

“What else have you tested it on?” he asked carefully. 

Dr. O’Deorain tapped her chin in thought, “Four sickly rats that were scheduled for euthanasia, myself on accident, and three - well, four pot plants now.”

“But not other people?”

She sighed and looked at him pointedly, “I know I’m labelled a monster, but I’m not stupid. No one is going to just let me test on human beings. And I wasn’t just going to test on random people and get arrested for God knows what. When I wrote the paper about this device, I knew full well that no one else would want to touch it. It’s not viable for other people to use in the same way that I do. I just… I just wanted them to see that it was possible to use the same technology in both directions.”

“Why?”

She shrugged, “Why not? Just because we can’t think of a good use for it right now doesn’t mean it won’t be useful in the future. I’m not overly concerned with uses for science, as much as figuring out what truths science can teach us.”

Gabriel nodded. Made sense in a weird way. “What else can you do with this thing?”

O’Deorain looked a bit sheepish, “Well, I didn’t dedicate too much time to this project, it was really more of a thought experiment that went out of hand, but before I shelved it, I managed to perfect some tricks.”

“And what tricks can you do?”

“Well, you see… I can make it into a… a ball that bounces!” At seeing his highly confused face, she continued, “Never mind, let me just show you.”

She did a motion that looked vaguely like snapping her fingers on both hands, and two tiny balls appeared over her palms, the left palm had a tiny golden yellow ball, and the right palm had a dark violet ball. 

“See? And I can make them bigger…”

The dark ball disappeared as she brought her hands together and gently coaxed the yellow ball into growing to the size of a small melon. 

“And they bounce!”

She gently tossed the ball at the wall to prove her point, but it just smacked the wall and burst into a large cloud of yellow golden spray.

“Ah, bollocks, let me try again...”

She went through the process again and this time, when she tossed it at the wall, it did bounce. It bounced off the wall and floated past them towards the other wall behind them. 

Gabriel watched in awe as the little yellow ball bounced around the room. As it passed by the second pot plant (the one that escaped being drained), he saw tendrils come off the ball towards the plant. 

After a few more bounces, the ball finally dissipated into the air. 

The plant touched by the ball looked visibly healthier. 

Gabriel looked back at the doctor to see her watching him very intently. She clearly wanted his input or approval. He’d string her along a little more. “Does it heal humans too?”

O’Deorain scoffed, “Of course it does!”

She made a threw another yellow ball at the wall, but this time as it floated by, she picked up a scalpel from off the table nearby and quickly cut a slice in the bare flesh of her exposed right arm before Gabriel could even react. 

But he needn’t have worried. Just like the plant, the ball sent out little tendrils towards the doctor’s arm as it passed. Gabriel watched in awe as the shallow wound closed before his eyes. 

Seeing his awe-struck expression, she held out her right arm for him to inspect. “I also can make an orb of the… other variety… but I don’t feel like that’s a good idea in such an enclosed space. That and I haven’t tested it but once. I didn’t want it to accidentally kill my rabbits. Or myself.”

That made sense. “Do you think you could get the death one to ignore allied targets?”

She hummed, “Probably, it would just be the same way that the other nano-biotics used in combat work with healing only white-listed allies, only just doing it in reverse.”

She made another yellow ball and bopped it towards the ceiling as she continued babbling about how she would get the orbs to only heal allies and harm enemies. As it bounced back down to the floor, she bopped it back up. The light from the ball lit up her smiling face as she started talking about how they worked. 

Gabriel knew that Dr. O’Deorain wasn’t a good person by the standards of Overwatch, but he honestly wondered how they had made this woman into the monster they had described.

Gabriel felt tension leave his shoulders. She didn’t fit or follow standard procedure, and based on his interactions with her so far, she never would. But she was smart. She was innovative. She wasn’t the cruel witch that Ana and Angela made her out to be. 

He felt the hope in his chest bloom and beat back the uncertainty of his decision to take this woman into Blackwatch. 

Everything was going to be fine. Standard procedure or not. 

* * *

Extra Scene:

“So what’s with the needle fingers?”

“Oh, those? I found that working with the draining orb, other than nearly killing myself and my rabbits, made my fingertips lose feeling. So I tried to add some distance by using the needles as extenders.”

“But why needles?”

“It was all I had at the time. I didn’t want to ask for more resources on something I wasn’t supposed to be working on anyway. 

“Fair enough, but uh… let me help you redesign this into something less like Edward Scissorhands’s lesser known medical cousin.”

“… Who?”

“Never mind.”

  
  



End file.
